The Do’s and Don’ts of the best practices on your way to start a great business

We are always asked about how to find the best startup business ideas. So considering there is so much advise out there let us guide you with our take on this dilemma. If you want to launch a startup, you have to start with an idea. There is no magic crystal ball that are going to guide you to the best startup ideas and warn you about which ones are the worst.

There is really no “one” template that fits all, and no true and tried “plug-and-play” magic list of startup business ideas that you can cherry pick from in order to create your next venture. This plug-and-play model doesn’t exist. If it did, everyone would actually be killing it all the time. (Like having the magic number for the lottery every time you play!)

So, no magic solutions here, instead we are going to help you figure out how to navigate the road to success with the Do’s and Don’ts of the best practices on your way to start a great business. Think of this as a general guide to finding your perfect fit during your journey.

DO: BE THE SOLUTION, SOLVE A PROBLEM. The one thing that successful startup ideas all have in common is that they solve a (pesky) problem. That problem can obviously be one of many, many things, but the key is that it’s a problem that is common and irritating enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution.

DO: HAVE A MARKET FOR YOUR SOLUTION. The importance of market-fit is “the” most crucial component of success for a startup. Many fail to realize what is the “true” market demand for their solution (product, services, or else) and who is the “true” customer!

DO: PAY ATTENTION TO TIMING. As we always say there is no “Ctrl-Alt-Del” for your time, so you need to accelerate your startup deployment and traction model and timeframe. You cannot afford to waste many months on validating, finding customer… Plus, a bad timing of an idea is something that’s just too early or more likely too late in the customer adoption cycle! Timing is everything.

DO HAVE G.R.I.T.S. & DON’T: GIVE UP. You will be faced with many obstacles along your path to success. In the real world your idea will get beat up thousand times until it barely resembles whatever you started with! You need to learn what to take and what to dump. Many (investors, mentors, advisors, partner and family) will offer free advice, you need to know what is useful and what is truly useless. You also need tenacity, intuition, resolution, strength (no, not the gym type –mental), consistency and more importantly passion.

DO: MAKE SURE IT’S SOMETHING YOU KNOW. You are going to spend a lot of time, money, energy and effort to make this thing happen, you better know about this and have a passion for it. This is not a 9 to 5 job, where you can punch in and punch out…

DO: PICK AN IDEA THAT’S AN INNOVATIVE TAKE ON AN EXISTING MARKET. There are tremendous opportunities to take on an existing market where novel and smart solutions can immediately tap into the, guess what? The existing millions of customers looking for a better solution. Netflix did not invent movies, they just tapped into a market where millions upon millions watched movies but wanted a better and easier way to access them! Bingo a Billion dollar business.

DO: CONCENTRATE ON EXECUTION. A dumb idea is the one you fumble in the field by missing critical details, like how customers would react or what competitors might change while you’re still picking up the ball. We love this analogy! Because it happens more with startups than in a football game. Great startup leaders see further when they can see through many eyes. This means staying in close communication with their on-the-ground players, just like the way football coaches talks with quarterbacks on headsets throughout the entire game. Excellent execution requires both breadth and depth.

DON’T: PICK AN IDEA THAT HAS TOO MANY VARIABLES. We have worked with startups with great ideas but the variables and options were so many it made is way too complex to quickly, nimbly address the market! Simple solutions, with clear roadmap to customer acquisition and retentions are the best!

DON’T: JUST ADD FEATURES TO AN EXISTING PRODUCT. This is a model that is predominant at many Incubators! The idea of adding a feature to a well coveted and implemented product. Wait a minute, what is keeping with the product owner(s) who are most likely a well-established businesses not implementing their own similar if not same features? IP issues, forget it, they already have the IPs for whatever you think you own!

And, our favorite, because we love Collaborating:

DO: CONSIDER STARTING A STARTUP THAT SERVES OTHER STARTUPS. Yes, you read it right! There are so many collective, shared services and complementary solutions that startups can provide to each other it is not funny! The problem is with leaving the startup founders ego at the door. The “not-invented-here” syndrome is what kills this immense opportunity for startups to help each other succeed. It’s like an “ant colony” collaboration makes it super strong!

We have many other Do’s and Don’ts that are too many to list here. So whether you are a brand new ideation phase or an in-the process of getting it done startup give us a try, send us an email for a totally free assessment and screening to make you jumps start the don’ts of your startup journey. You will get there faster!

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